Viewing the Audit Trails

Vault provides a robust audit trail of all actions performed on a document or object record. Vault also allows you to export this information in order to facilitate reporting and filtering at a more granular level. The audit trail window displays the following:

Timestamp: Date and time that the action was performed, adjusted to your own timezone. Timestamps also indicate the time of year an event occurred using daylight savings time. For example, audit trails in Vaults using the GMT timezone show GMT times during the fall and winter and BST time during the spring and summer.
User Name: Login name for the user who performed the action; this sometimes shows “System” to indicate that the action was performed automatically by Vault. “System” actions include state changes and field updates performed as part of a workflow, as well as initiating an auto-start workflow.
Version: (Document audit trail only) Version of the document on which the action occurred
Event Description: Description of the action that occurred, for example, “‘tlee@veevapharm.com’ was added to the ‘Editor’ field”. Note that when data changes, the description shows both the previous value and the new value.

See the complete list of audited actions.

Note: Audit logs support a precision to one second. Events occurring within a single second may appear in an unexpected order.

How to Access Document Audit Trails

To open the audit trail:

From the Actions menu in the Library or Doc Info page, choose Audit Trail.
The audit trail information displays in a window. Actions appear in most recent to least recent order.
Optional: To change the audit trail filter, choose an option from the drop-down.
Optional: To download the audit trail, click the action menu icon and select CSV, Text, or PDF. If Multilingual Document Handling is enabled, export to Text. The exported file has different columns than the audit trail window.
When finished, click Close.

How to Access Object Record Audit Trails

To open the object record audit trail:

Navigate to the object record list or the record detail page through Business Admin or a custom tab.
From the Actions menu, choose Audit Trail.
Optional: Select an object in the Included Objects drop-down to view the related record audit trail.
Optional: To change the audit trail filter, choose an option from the drop-down.
The audit trail information displays in a window. Events appear in most recent to least recent order.
When finished, click Close.

Vault does not audit individual field values for newly created records. For example, the audit trail for a new Product record would only include a single entry, and the Event Description would be “Product: CholeCap created.” We recommend exporting the current record along with the audit trail to ensure a complete export of all values. When a user deletes an object record, the audit trail captures all field values.

Users can view an audit trail that includes audit events for related object records. The Audit Trail window displays an Included Objects drop-down, from which you can select any object that has an inbound relationship to the primary object. If you’ve selected Included Objects in a previous audit request, Vault remembers your selection and displays these object records by default.

When you click Get History, Vault displays the audit trail for the primary object record, as well as 100 records for each related object that you included. The Record column shows the object label and the object record in which the event occurred. Note that related record audit trail requests covering a period of four (4) or more months may take longer to display.

In the audit trail, Vault enforces Field Level Security, but does not enforce Atomic Security. Thus, if a user can never see a field due to Field Level Security, the field is hidden in the audit trail. If the field is hidden for the user only in certain states due to the Atomic Security configuration, the field is visible to the user in the audit trail.

Interpreting Audit Trail Information

It is important to understand these items when reviewing audit trail information.

Yes/No Fields

Vault allows Yes/No fields to display as a checkbox or radio buttons. These options do not affect the way the data is stored or the way the data displays in the audit trail:

Yes or selected fields = True
No or cleared fields = False

Empty Fields

Empty fields (blank or null) display as double quotes ("") in the audit trail.

Filtering Audit Trails

By default, the audit trail is filtered by Timestamp, all. You can select a different time frame from the second drop-down.

To change or add filters for the individual audit trail:

Select Timestamp, Event, or User from the drop-down.
Optional: If you selected Timestamp, select a date range in the drop-down to the right. If you selected in the range, two additional date fields will appear. Click on each field to select a start and end date for the range.
Optional: If you selected Event, the operator In and a second drop-down will appear. Select the desired event(s) from the second drop-down. Click Apply.
Optional: If you selected User, the operator In and a second drop-down will appear. Select the desired user(s) from the second drop-down. You can select multiple individual users, but not user groups.
Optional: Click on the Add filter button to add any of the remaining filters (Timestamp, Event, or User).
Click Apply to update the table.

Filtering Events for Field Value Changes

When filtering by Event in the object audit trail or individual record audit trail, the Edit event filters audit entries that capture a change in value to a field. However, Long Text and Rich Text fields are not categorized under the same Edit event and will not be displayed with this filter. To see edit events related to these fields, you must additionally filter Event with RichText and Long Text.

How to Export Audit Trails

To download the audit trail, click the action menu icon and select CSV, Text, or PDF. Audit trails export as TXT when the multilingual document handling setting is enabled, and as CSV when this setting is disabled.

CSV Exports

The exported CSV file shows information in a slightly different format. For example, the CSV file separates the details of each event into individual columns.

PDF Exports

When you export as PDF, Vault adds page numbers and a cover page to the PDF. All audit histories and audit trails use the same Audit Export Cover Page template.

Document Usage Metrics

In addition to the audit trail, Vault includes a Document Usage object, which captures more comprehensive document usage metrics than Vault’s standard document auditing allows. Each time a user performs specific actions on documents in their Steady state, such as views, downloads, copies, and rendition downloads, Vault automatically creates a new (non-editable) Document Usage object record.

The following permissions affect your access to audit trails:

Audit Trail	Permission
All	To view the audit trails, you need the Application: Audit Trail: View permission.
All	To export audit trails, you need the Application: Audit Trail: Export permission.
Document Audit Trail	For the document audit trail, you must be in a role on the document that grants the View Document permission.
Object Record Audit Trail	For the object audit trail, you must be able to access the object record detail page. If the object uses custom sharing rules, you’ll need to be in a role on the object record. If not, your security profile must grant view access to the object record through Admin or through a custom tab.
Object Record Audit Trail	To view the Audit Trail action, you need the Objects: [Object]: Audit Trail: View permission. This permission only applies if an Admin configures the object to use Action Level Security on the Audit Trail action.
Object Record Audit Trail	To use the Audit Trail action, you need the Objects: [Object]: Audit Trail: Execute permission. This permission only applies if an Admin configures the object to use Action Level Security on the Audit Trail action.